Guest Blogger Laura Whitaker

Today on our blog we welcome Laura Whitaker, who has an amazing sense of design when it comes to scrapbooking. Meet Laura!

Hi there, my name is Laura Whitaker, and I am so super excited to be a guest here today!

I love Canadian Scrapbooker magazine and am honoured to have been published in a few issues! I live in Hamilton, Ontario with my husband; we have been married forever, and have three great boys: Christopher, 25; Jonathan, 23; and Timothy, 11. I have been a stay at home mom since I became visually impaired 15 years ago and currently homeschool our youngest child.

I began scrapbooking around the same time that I stopped working. Being at home alone all day after having a busy job was a huge culture shock. My husband suggested that I start a hobby and after attending a Creative Memories party, I decided that scrapbooking would be it. I am not sure that he realized, at the time, how far into this hobby I would submerse myself. but he is super supportive and is happy to drive me all over the place to scrapbook with the amazing friends I have acquired because of this wonderful hobby. He, our boys and our Olde English Bulldog puppy are the usual suspects that inspire and grace my scrapbook layouts. I would like to share a bit about my crafting world and a few of my pages with you today.

I am very fortunate to be designing for a few great companies. Elaine and Eileen, the owners of ScrapMuch? , a fantastic Canadian local business, have let me design for them for many years now. I create a monthly reveal using products that are new to their online store, as well as creating project kits and classes for their semi-annual retreats. In addition, I create four sketches a month for their challenges, coordinate their design team, create weekly tutorials and do most of their blogging. This keeps me very busy. This is a page that I created for a recent reveal using the gorgeous Bo Bunny “Altitude” collection, some vintage photos of my husband and a Silhouette cut file that I made.

I have been designing for Boys Rule Scrapbook Kits for a couple of years now. Boys Rule is a Canadian kit club with an international subscriber list. Laura-Lee Audit puts together an amazing kit every two months. When my kit arrives, I pull it out to just admire all the goodies and somehow hours / days pass and I find myself creating until I have nothing left but scraps! I don’t know what happens, something just comes over me – like a crafting coma! This is a page I created with the latest kit, using papers from Bo Bunny and We R Memory Keepers as well as goodies from Pink Paislee and Jillibean Soup.

I also design for Evalicious; I am on my second quarterly term and love creating with the gorgeous journaling cards, stamps and embellishments from this great Canadian designer. I don’t know about you but I always get a little extra excited when I get to play with Canadian products! This is a page that I created recently with loads of Evalicious goodies, and not one scrap of patterned paper! Gasp! You will notice that I still haven’t mastered how to not wrinkle my background paper when using water colour paints.

In my free time (ha, ha!), I run a challenge site called Stuck?! Sketches. We offer two sketch challenges per month, using my sketches, and the fabulous design team provides stunning pages to inspire our followers to play along. Because of our generous sponsors, we are able to offer two great prizes per challenge, and we have participants from around the globe. Two things that I love about running this site are I am lucky enough to “meet” other crafters from around the world, and I can play with whatever product is currently inspiring me and really mix things up. This is my most recent page for Stuck?! Sketches, using papers from Simple Stories and Teresa Collins as well as embellishments from Teresa Collins, Jillibean Soup, Creative Embellishments, Recollections, My Mind’s Eye, Tim Holtz and Pink Paislee.

I would like to thank Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine for inviting me to be here today. It was such a lovely surprise and more than a dream come true, because let’s face it how could I even dream something like this may happen! I would love for you to visit me on my blog (www.scrappinaroundtheclock.blogspot.com) to check out some of my creations, find links to where I play and download some of my free Silhouette cut files.

Thanks for sharing with our readers, Laura. We’re so happy you had time for us, considering your very busy schedule! We love your work!

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Comments

Laura is one of the most generous gals I have ever met. In addition to all she gives, as written above, she is always available to help fellow scrappers on an individual basis, with suggestions, motivation and encouragement. I personally have learned so much from Laura! Thank you for showcasing this very special person!

Ever since I’ve known Laura, I’ve been in AWE by her talent. It’s as if product developers design their lines around her work, Everything she creates is unbelievably beautiful. Bet of all, Laura has a wonderful giving personality with a great big kind heart. Congratulations Laura, well done!